Sunday, September 16, 2018

2018 WEG Endurance: Diary of a Collapse

How the FEI and the Organizing Committee turned the Enduro World into a hell

Pre-Written

I will tell you here all the mismatch of information and disorganization that triggered the greatest absurdity that has ever seen in enduro world in history, but first there is a caveat. Event volunteers and the people of the area were extremely helpful, gentle and kind. They all tried to help - even more than they could - to sympathize with us and take responsibility for problems that were not theirs. It was a real class of civility and a sense of community.

04/09/2018 - The Arrival of the Horses

Around 09:00 the truck that brought the horses from the Miami Quarantine arrives. Squirming through the narrow paths of Tryon Park and dividing space with tractors and cranes reaches the last stables in which we would stay. After descending, the horses can not go over the grass or walk a little bit, all thanks to the USDA and its nook with Piroplasmosis. Direct to the stables, the horses that took two flights, 14 hours of truck and were trapped in the quarantine for 7 days would still be stopped by at least one more.

Seeing the USDA sterilize the truck as if they had Ebola samples there, I had the idea of ​​picking up a bale of hay before they could render it unusable. Idea that proved very useful, since in the sequence we would find that in the park there was still no hay or ration (we were forbidden to take ours) and no one knew when they would arrive. It was the first of many "I dont know" that we would hear, almost a mantra of our stay.

The second would come soon: the grooms' accommodations were not ready and nobody knew when they would be. The organization arranged a hotel for them 20 minutes from the park and there we went to install them. From there I headed to the hotel they had assigned to me, 25 minutes from the park, but in the opposite direction, that is, 45 minutes from the grooms hotel.

05/09 - Misinformation

The grooms wake up with a paper under their doors: they should leave the rooms, since there were accommodations for them in the park. If "I dont know" would be our mantra, the disinformation was a constant of the trip and there was the first example. Arriving in the park there was no accommodation, but they guaranteed that by the end of the day the lodges would be ready.

The horses could already walk in the ring and the afternoon could go out on the trail, but never graze or have contact with the grass, as if that would infect the US with Piro.

Shortly after lunch we learned that the promise of a trail would not be honored and that only the ring road remained free. The second promise-the cabins for the grooms-would not be fulfilled, but this news would only arrive at midnight, an hour after, tired of waiting, we reserved a room for them to spend the night. was reimbursed by the organization)

06/09 - No lodge and no parking

Arriving in the park in the morning we are surprised by a new rule: the cars can not reach the stands anymore. They do not say why or even when this would be the case ("I dont know"). Even with coolers, ice and other things to download we can not go through. We park about 2kms away from the stables and walk around carrying things until some volunteer with a golf cart passes by and offers a ride.

We imagine that the new rule is to give more agility to the works that spread through all the corners of Tryon and that give the impression that nothing will be really ready until the opening date, at most will be more or less set.

On accommodation for the grooms no serious news: just excuses and the promise that they will make a new pavilion and blablabla